The Canadian Association of Community Health Centres (CACHC) is the federal voice for Community Health Centres and community-oriented, people-centred primary health care across Canada. The association builds on the legacy of the former Canadian Alliance of Community Health Centre Associations (CACHCA), which was first established in 1995.

The Canadian Association of Community Health Centres believes strongly that Community Health Centres are an optimal model of primary health care for all Canadians.

The main objective of CACHC is to work for improved health and health-care for individuals and families in communities across Canada, expanding access to Community Health Centres as a high-quality, cost-effective method for delivering primary health care and improving health outcomes.

Our core values and principles

CACHC and its members believe that health services in Canada, including primary health care, should be provided in keeping with the principles of universality, accessibility, comprehensiveness, portability, and public administration, as described in the Canada Health Act.

• We believe Canadian residents are best served by the further development and maintenance of a single-tiered health system.

• We believe there must be a strong emphasis on health promotion and illness prevention in health service provision in order to achieve what Tommy Douglas described as the “Second Stage of Medicare”. We advocate to ensure that these dimensions are an integral part of health service needs assessment, design and delivery across Canada.

• We believe that community residents, in partnership with providers and funders of health services, must be involved in identifying the needs of their community and in designing and overseeing service delivery, and evaluating health services programs.

• We believe that economic, social and environmental factors such as adequate incomes, strong social support systems, safe physical environments, adequate housing and healthy eco-systems have a profound impact on people’s health, including access to health services. We are prepared to take political and social action to enhance the positive effect of these determinants on people’s health.

• We believe individuals, families and communities should have equitable opportunities to achieve well-being and to have their health needs met regardless of economic, racial, cultural, age, geographic, gender or sexual status. We work to remove inequities in opportunity or access to health services.

NOTE: Cover webpage image courtesy of the Canadian Mosaic Project